D&D 5E Is Anyone Using Variant Encumbrance?

[delericho]

Ok, so long as we are speaking the same language.

First: An outstanding post in general.

"We leave no man behind!", in D&D tends to be replaced with, "We leave no coin behind!"

True, and amusing.

I think I may have not communicated clearly. I don't really have a problem with bags of holding.

Ah. When I was talking about the TARDIS-backpack, I was meaning a non-magical pack that nonetheless has infinite volume. The reference was to this. Sorry for the poor communication.

I've got 500 pages of house rules, and counting. Ok, I understand you don't want to formalize things that much, and maybe you aren't a really good rules smith, but seriously, how does any DM get hidebound?

Lack of experience, mostly, I think.

I was thinking on this some more on my drive home. Some thoughts, if you'll permit me a bit of a tangent...

Any rule, but especially more peripheral rules (such as encumbrance, but also alignment and spell components) will add a certain amount of hassle to the game, if only because you have to remember to use it. (I'll label that H.) And, likewise, any rule will add some sort of value to the game, which I'll label V.

(Both H and V could, in theory, be negative.)

So, ideally, you would want to minimise H while maximising V, in order to get the most value for the least hassle. Usually, of course, you get a trade-off between the two.

For lots of people, the hassle inherent in encumbrance rules is very high and the value-add very low. So, since H >> V, they'd be better just abandoning the rules entirely - they just don't work for them.

Conversely, you've indicated that not using encumbrance can weaken or even damage immersion. In which case, V >> H, and it makes sense to use encumbrance almost regardless. (Though, with 500 pages of house rules, I expect you're using a pretty damn good variant. )

And, for me, I like the concept of encumbrance, but find that the ratio of Hassle to Value-add is just wrong - too much hassle, and not enough gain. And so I find myself noodling about for a better way, one that's either less Hassle (such as using simplified units as Dausuul suggest), or gives more Value-add, or both.

But, of course, that's all a tangent.

 

[jgsugden]

The henchmen guild fully supports the use of these alternate rules.

I do not use these rules because I want to avoid the Dungeons and Accounting issues in my game due to the setting (Walking Dead meets Babylon 5 in a high fantasy world - the fact that pretty much everybody has been killed really cuts down the number of henchmen available for hire). However, if I were playing in a game that had these rules, and I was playing a character that wore armor, I would be hiring a henchman so that I never did more than carry my weapons and armor. My wizard, barbarian or rogue might not waste the coin...